DHAKA, 1 November 2006 — Bangladesh’s President Iajuddin Ahmed yesterday reshuffled the government administration firing the chiefs of a controversial elite security force and the police intelligence agency after the opposition set him a weekend deadline to prove his neutrality.
Iajuddin also sacked or transferred 27 senior bureaucrats on his first day as head of an interim government.
The president appointed 10 advisers and swore them in at a simple ceremony at the presidential palace. The state-owned Bangladesh Television telecast the ceremony live.
Iajuddin will be assisted in his new role by these advisers, chosen from nominees given by major political parties. The panel of advisers included three women, a former judge, former diplomats, an ex-military general, a newspaper editor, and educationists.
The are likely to be assigned portfolios as soon as possible, a spokesman at the presidential palace said.
President Iajuddin terminated the contract of Abdul Aziz Sarker, director general of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), a government statement said. The force has been accused of carrying out hundreds of extrajudicial killings since its inception in 2004. Critics say it “eliminates” suspects rather than pass them over to the police and courts.
RAB officials say the suspects are killed by officers acting in self-defense or when they resist arrest. The 75-year-old president, who was sworn in as the caretaker government chief on Sunday after the two main parties could not agree on a compromise candidate scrapped the contract of the country’s intelligence chief Farrukh Ahmed Chowdhury, another government order said.
In the reshuffle at the bureaucracy, Secretary of Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) Rafiqul Islam was made Economic Relations Division (ERD) secretary while ERD Secretary Mohammed Ismail Jabihullah was appointed public affairs secretary in the president’s office.
Meanwhile, the country saw a lull in deadly violence yesterday. Bangladesh has been rocked by several days of violent protests after the Islamist-allied coalition government came to the end of its five-year term. “All the inter-district buses have been operating throughout the country. Things are normal everywhere other than a few isolated incidents,” national police chief Anwarul Iqbal told AFP. Millions also began returning to cities from their villages having been stranded in the countryside by transport blockades following the Eid Al-Fitr.
In the capital Dhaka, private cars and buses were back on the roads and the stock market opened — although there was still a heavy police and paramilitary presence in key locations, police officials said.
